Wow – looks like the consulate has opened up more slots. You can read their notice here.
They also listed upcoming holidays, which I’m going to copy here, just to make sure we’ve got a record of them when the page there changes to another URL.

U.S. Labor Day: Sept. 6 (Consulate Closed)
Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival: Sept [...]

I’m told that the consulate is once again backed up with appointments, and that people are having to delay travel because there aren’t enough appointment slots available.
When this has happened before we’ve been able to get them to open the schedule up a bit more by getting our congress people involved.
To write your senator go [...]

As many of you figured out yesterday, different USCIS offices do different things. The 18 months is supposed to go from expiration date to expiration date, but at least two offices were doing it based on when they got the new one approved instead, and since they allowed a long period between request for a [...]

The first rumor is that the CCAA is preparing to match. If you don’t know what that might mean then you may want to check out the “How the Matching Room Works” link in the right hand column under “Important Posts”.
The second rumor is that the USCIS plans to begin requiring that home [...]

First, I don’t see any rumors about a possible cut-off date. I also do not believe that we are close to the next batch. One of the “mystery” referral deliveries has been explained, the other has not… but there is no evidence that the CCAA is nearing completion of the next batch.
Second, the media is [...]

First, the Scruggs family was denied a Visa to bring their daughter home. I’m still looking for something we as a community can do to make sure this doesn’t continue to happen. We need to either find a way for our children to get a clean bill of health before we travel, or we need [...]